


to tear apart space and time (and heart and mind)

by FloingMachines



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: An Exploration of Steve's Feelings, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloingMachines/pseuds/FloingMachines
Summary: Steve goes on a journey to return the six Infinity stones to the time and place which they came from and has to make a life-altering decision in the process.**Contains Endgame Spoilers! Lots of them!**





	1. Power

**Author's Note:**

> It's been forever since I wrote anything for the MCU!  
> Big thanks to my roommate who not only Beta'd this, but inspired me to write it.  
> PS- Thank you Endgame for reviving interest in Agent Carter, all my old Agent Carter stuff has suddenly gotten a lot of attention  
> **If you have managed to get this far and still not see this: **ENDGAME SPOILERS AHEAD**

“You know where you’re going?” Sam’s arms were crossed over his chest with Bucky standing close behind him. “You have enough Pym Particles?”

“I have more than enough.” Steve smiled and for a moment his eyes met Bucky’s. He had talked with him earlier over breakfast. It was a private affair mostly, but they had discussed what Steve going back in time  _ really _ meant for him.

Neither of them were big on breakfast anymore, but it was a formality. They were sitting in Tony’s cabin (he supposed it was Pepper’s now…after everything that had happened) and looking out on the lake while drinking coffee was nice. It was a nice change of pace considering how their lives had been going recently.

“So,” Bucky had spoken first. “Sam told me you’re taking the stones back.”

Steve sucked in a breath and watched his coffee slowly swirl around in the cup. “Yeah.”

“Were you going to tell me?”

He found himself hesitating for a moment. “I was going to…” He trailed off.

“But it’s hard.” Bucky finished the sentence for him. “I get it. It has a lot of…implications for you.”

“I suppose it does.” Steve took another sip of coffee and let his gaze follow the lake and settle on the tree line beyond. “I’ve thought about it, you know.”

“You mean staying, right? Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.” They both laughed and then fell silent.

There was so much left unsaid about their friendship. Steve let his gaze fall back on Bucky and the light that was catching his hair and his eyes. For a moment he felt the gravity of the situation and the loss he had sustained. First, he thought that Bucky was dead, then Bucky turned out to be a brainwashed Soviet assassin, and then he was back. It was his Bucky again, and he had a chance to be with his best friend again. Not only his best friend, but potentially the only person that could relate to what he had gone through.

“What do you think?”

Bucky was silent for a moment, pensive even. He wasn’t like that before everything had happened. It was just something else that had changed.

“I think you should be happy.” He finally answered. “Are you happy here? Are you happy  _ now _ ?”

“I thought I was, but now I’m not sure. I’ve spent most of the time here and now, fighting, and I never stopped to think if I was happy. It didn’t matter, the greater good mattered, and so many other people mattered. I don’t know what I want.”

“It sounds like you do.”

“What do you mean?”

Bucky set down his coffee cup and cleared his throat. “Stay with her. Stay with  _ Peggy _ . You just…you never quite seemed to get back into the swing of things. You tried, and you tried, and you tried, and I have so much respect for that, but you’re not happy here. You tried and you spent years putting everyone before yourself and trying so hard to be  _ happy _ , but this is not where you’re meant to be.”

“I’m not sure if I can do it.” His head dropped and all he could do was stare at the table.

Bucky reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Whatever you do, I’ll support your decision. As long as you’re happy.”

“Thanks, Buck.” His voice came out strangled and weak as a few tears rolled down his cheeks.

The conversation rang in his ears as he stood on the pad and Bruce, Sam, and Bucky talked between themselves. There was so much left unsaid and undecided, but for once saying he had all the time in the world wasn’t an exaggeration.

“You ready, old man?” Sam asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” He replied and then looked at Bucky. “Hey Buck, don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

He smiled back. “How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

In that instant he felt the extreme nausea from the quantum realm. He squeezed his eyes shut and he could clearly picture Bucky standing in front of him and smiling. For a moment he wondered if the nausea was also part of the guilt, he felt from leaving  _ again _ . It was almost too much to bear and to process, but before he could truly think about it he was dumped onto cold,damp rocks.

He was in a cave. He was in a cave with water dripping from the ceilings  into massive puddles on the floor. They told him that he was going to be on Morag, but somehow, he had expected Morag to be different from…this. When he was told that he was going to be on an alien planet he had assumed that it would have been at least a little more glamorous. 

Steve got to his feet and looked around for a moment. This dark and gloomy place  _ did _ seem like a place that would hold one of the infinity stones, especially considering how much pain and misery the stones had brought into their lives. It was a cave of sorts, an empty cave at that with the exception of a single alien rat that ran over his foot.

“Hey!” He stumbled backwards and kicked the creature away as he slipped on the wet rocks and fell backwards. The rat scurried off to another corner of the cave and Steve stood up again and looked around making sure no one had seen the rat that had made him fall on his ass.

As he surveyed the area one more time, something caught his eye, or rather  _ someone _ caught his eye. The person almost looked familiar and Steve cautiously approached the figure. Once he got closer, he could see that the person was a man with curly brown hair and was wearing headphones that looked archaic, even by his standards.

“Excuse me?” He nudged the body, but there was no movement. The only indication of life was that his back was steadily rising and falling.

Steve rolled the man over onto his side and then immediately realized what had happened. This was Peter – Peter Quill, but not the same one that he knew. This must have been from before he had met the rest of the people he was with now (the tree-man Groot, Drax, the raccoon-man Rocket, Nebula, and Mantis) and he probably should leave Peter Quill where he lay.

There was a smaller cave in the direction that Quill was facing and Steve squinted at it, seeing a faint light inside.  _ That must be where the Power Stone goes _ , he thought before rolling Peter so he was lying face-down again. He lingered for a moment to examine what was attached to his belt – it looked archaic, but after his time. Through a grimy plastic window, he could see a little square with ‘ _ Awesome Mix’ _ written on the side in messy handwriting. He brought his hand away shortly after the examination, afraid to break it.

Who retrieved the power stone? He couldn’t remember as he walked toward the tunnel. It wasn’t Clint and Natasha (no, no remember that? He didn’t want to remember that). It must’ve been Rhodes and Nebula. Were they the ones to knock Peter out? They must’ve been. There was no other reason he would’ve been face down in a puddle.

He was trying to stay alert as he approached the smaller tunnel, but sound was echoing so severely that it made it difficult to focus. There was an indescribable energy radiating from the case with the stones now and it was giving him a headache that seemed to get worse with every step. As crazy as it sounded, it felt like the stone didn’t want to go back where it came from. More than anything, Steve wanted it out of his life.

He stepped into the tunnel and it became clear that there was a pedestal for the stone that now sat empty. He clicked the case open and he could feel the power radiating from the stones weigh on his body. He shuddered, remembering that Banner had wielded all six of these stones at once (and then Tony) and it was a wonder how Bruce hadn’t shared the same fate as Tony. The sheer presence of the stones was enough to give him a migraine that could rival his worst hangover.

He held out his hand and the purple stone gravitated out and floated just above the palm of his hand. He brought it up close to the pedestal and as if it were magnetic, flew out of its hand and centered itself in the beam of light. Steve exhaled a breath of relief. That was one stone down, five more to go. It was a start for sure, but he needed to move on. He had all the time in the world, but Morag gave him the creeps.

“I’m Starlord!” An unfamiliar voice made him pause.

“I am Ronan…Ronan the Destroyer.”

Steve tensed up. Was Ronan the one that released the Chitauri onto New York? He quietly set the case down on the floor and took his shield off his back and slipped it over his left arm while wielding Mjolnir in the other. If he had to fight his way out, then he would. It wouldn’t be the first time he fought aliens and the way things were going for him, it probably wouldn’t be the last.

“Well, uh, Ronan the Destroyer I have unfinished business here. If you could just move…”

“The Power Stone will be ours…it goes to Thanos.”

“Thanos?”

“The Mad Titan?”

Peter quipped at Ronan again before footsteps got closer to the cave. “We’re taking the Power Stone, Starlord.”

“I don’t think so.”

The sound of blaster fire started and Steve stepped out of the cave, shield in front of him. Peter turned around and his eyes grew wide when they landed on the hammer. There was a tall blue man with black stripes that Steve assumed was Ronan and without hesitation he threw the hammer directly at him. Ronan was sent rocketing backwards and Peter made a break from the room with the pedestal.

“Was that…” He heard Peter trail off. 

The more Steve heard, the more he realized that Earth was dreadfully out of loop with the rest of the galactic happenings.

He held his hand out to summon Mjolnir and grabbed the case from the room with the pedestal, and then darted behind a boulder while frantically punching times and coordinates into his suit. Ronan bellowed in the distance and Steve wanted nothing more than to leave. He could hear Quill’s blaster fire starting again and was grateful that he didn’t come looking for him.

The hammer landed squarely in his hands and he wrapped his fingers around the hilt before grabbing onto the case and the hammer tightly and pressing the button on his wrist, warping him out of one time and place and into another. In the back of his mind he worried about the version of Peter Quill he had abandoned, but pushed it away with the weak confidence that the timelines would sort themselves out.

The timelines that Tony had swore would sort themselves out. Tony, who wasn’t here anymore to see the world grow. They had brought back so many things (so many people), but he wasn’t one of them. They had defeated Thanos and reversed what he had done, but there was still loss. The snap was reversed and yet he still felt an ache in his heart remembering Tony and Natasha and all of the other things that they couldn’t fix.

He warped out of one time and place and into another, but he felt like he still had more questions than answers. He might as well carry out the last step of the plan that Scott and then Tony had started.

One stone down, five to go.


	2. Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My roommate said this chapter got her right in the feels. It's probably going to get you guys in the feels, too.  
> Thank you for all the support on the first chapter! I'm having a lot of fun writing for Marvel again and exploring Steve's character post Endgame.  
> Also! Even thought the spoiler ban is lifted! **ENDGAME SPOILERS AHEAD**

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

That was his first thought when he saw the mountain. There was no way he was going to get away without climbing the damn thing. For a moment he considered going back to Earth and getting someone else to do this, someone else to climb this mountain, and to give back the goddamn Soul Stone. This was where Nat died after all, more specifically where she sacrificed herself for the stone, and he could feel something twist and snap inside of him looking at the mountain.

What would he see there? He began the climb up a long and winding staircase that looped up and around the mountain and decided that he would rather not know (not that his preferences made any differences, he would have to find out one way or another). Would there be someone there waiting for him? If so would it be Nat? He supposed there would probably be someone there - how else would Clint and Natasha have known what to do?

The closer he got to the top of the mountain, the more energy radiated from the case with the stone- the same way they did on Morag. Except this was Vormir and it was completely desolate of all life - there were no rats scurrying around in the cave. There were no space pirates face down on the ground and there were no blue aliens ready to swoop in and steal the stone all over again.

For a moment he feared that he would see what he really did not want to: Natasha’s final moments and her struggle with Clint (his retelling of events was heart-wrenching in of itself) but he steeled his nerves. Would he have the chance to get Natasha back? If he gave the stone back, could the transaction be reversed? 

The chance to bring Nat back...he shook his head in disbelief for a moment just thinking about it. Everything would be balanced then, right? If the stone was returned, but Nat was not...that was an inequality, right? He wanted to believe this to be true, but there was a part of him that could not stand to believe it if only on the virtue that the universe had not proven to be that kind. More specifically, the stones were not that kind.

He could see a decrepit arch in the distant and for a moment he almost dropped the case as a powerful wave of energy radiated off of it. Steve took a deep breath and held on tighter to the handle, forging ahead to find what was ahead. What would he see? Would he see anything? Would anyone or any _ thing _ be there? It  _ was _ an alien planet after all. It was starting to feel like space was ‘anything goes’ territory.

His breathing was shallow as he passed under the arch and he tensed up in anticipation only for him to see...nothing. It was a relatively flat and rocky surface with some boulders and half erect structure littering the surface. He looked around wildly, but there was nothing. He was about to give up and leave the stone on the ground when he saw a hooded figure floating towards him.

“Steve, son of-” It was a German voice, almost like…

“What the FUCK!” The words slipped out of his mouth when he saw him.

Johann Schmidt. The Red Skull. The Nazi he had killed to keep the world safe and whose plane he had crashed into the arctic. It was a face he never thought he’d see again, and now that he was seeing it again he realized that he never wanted to see it at all. He was still red and still missing the muscle and tissue from his face.

“Steven Rogers.”

“Where did you come from.” He dropped the case with the stones and pulled his shield off his back, gripping Mjolnir in his right hand. 

“It is my curse...to guard the Soul Stone.” He took a step towards Steve and Steve instinctively backed away from him.

“Stay away from me!” His shout came out more panicked than intended. This had to be a joke, or a trick. This was all about mind games, right? This had to be a mind game that the planet was playing with him. To have someone who had already taken so much from him be revealed to have taken even more and to be the person he had to return the stone to was cruel.

“I know you think this is a trick,” Red Skull continued. “But this is my curse. After I tried to hold the Tesseract and to use it...I was taken here to guard the Soul Stone and to warn anyone from taking it. It seems you are too late, though.”

“I’m not here to take the stone.”

“What could you possibly be here for?”

“I’m here to give it back.”

The Nazi-turned-spirit paused. “That’s not possible.”

“I don’t want it, I’m giving it back to you.”

“I cannot take it.”

“I’m telling you to take it!” His voice cracked when he yelled. “I don’t want it!”

“It is not mine to take.”

“You lying, son of a bitch!” He through Mjolnir in his direction, hoping it would knock him over, anything really, but it passed through his form and demolished a boulder behind him. 

“Everything requires a sacrifice, Captain Rogers.”

Steve fell to his knees and began to unclasp the case with the stones inside, and let the Soul Stone hover above his palm. He stood up and thrust his arm out towards Schmidt. “I’m putting this back where it belongs!”

“You wish to get your friend back. The one who perished in order to get the stone.”

“If I give the stone back, it brings Natasha back, right?”

“That’s not how this works, Captain Rogers.” He shook his head. “That’s not what a sacrifice is.”

“I know what a sacrifice is!” With every word his patience was thinning and his ability to remain coherent while holding this conversation. “You took  _ everything _ from me! You were an unhinged, genocidal maniac! I lost my best friend fighting you, I lost any chance of a normal life fighting you! Take the fucking stone!”

“You are conflicted. You are at a crossroads now, Steven Rogers.”

“I don’t care what you have to say to me!”

“You should.”

“I spent  _ years _ fighting you! I don’t care what you have to say!”

With a cry he threw the stone at Red Skull, his form vanishing, and the little yellow rock bounding over the ground. It landed close to what looked like the edge of a cliff and Steve stood up, cautiously walking towards it. He picked up the stone again and glanced over the edge. There was nothing at the bottom but jagged rocks and he took a deep breath as he hurled the stone over the edge.

“Take it back!” He fell to his knees. “I don’t want it! I never did!”

He could hear the stone hit the ground at the bottom of the cliff and a sob wracked his body. He had still been holding out hope that he could bring Natasha back from this, bring here home where she belonged, and all this could be done with. There would be no more sacrifices for the greater good after her, no more people throwing themselves off cliffs, or crashing planes into the ocean. It is unsustainable to carry on that way.

Despite everything he had seen, he had still been hoping that he could make this right. He had seen how cruel the universe could be, and yet he had always been secretly hoping that it was all a joke. He didn’t want to lose hope in the universe, he didn’t want to lose hope that the world could still be fair and kind, but things were not panning out the way he had always thought they would.

His chest was heaving and for a moment he lingered on his final fight with the Red Skull. After Johann had vaporized (was it considered teleportation now? He wasn’t sure) himself he had taken the controls of the plan and never for a moment did he hesitate to do what he thought was right - crash the plane and himself in the arctic. It was simply what needed to be done. It was one life for billions, there was absolutely no contest.

Now he found himself in a strange situation. He had the chance to go back and have the life he had given up. It wouldn’t change that the bombs were safely encased in ice or what he had done here, but the more he thought about it he was wondering what the incentive for staying  _ here _ even was. The world had more people willing to defend it than ever before - did they  _ need _ Captain America? After everything that had happened,  _ could _ he be Captain America anymore?

Would it be a crime to take the chance to live the life he had wanted? To use the power given to him to make that happen? Surely it was selfish to want to go back and to have what he could not, but was it a crime? Did he deserve to think of himself - just this once? An involuntary sigh left his lips and the last of frustrated tears fell down his cheeks as he remembered his life: past and present.

He slowly rose to his feet and took a shaky breath. At the very least, he had the right to see her. To say hello. To tell her all the things that he wished he could’ve told her seventy years ago. He wanted her to know at the very least how greatly he admired her, how much he wished he could’ve been half as strong as she was, and most of all he wanted to tell her that he loved her. She deserved to know what he truly thought - he had managed to leave so many things unsaid and now he had the chance to say them.

And she had the right to know.

It wouldn’t truly change anything, but it would provide an immense relief. That was his reasoning at least,  _ she _ deserved to know. He was doing it for  _ her _ , but in reality he knew that he had an extreme bias. He knew that at the very least  _ he _ wanted to see her.  _ He _ needed to tell her everything that happened. It was selfish and a part of him that felt like he was crossing a line, both moral and physical, but he didn’t care. He wanted to see her. That had to mean something.

“Steven Rogers,” He turned around to see Red Skull’s figure. “I told you, you are at a crossroads.”

Steve looked away and punched the time and dates for Asgard in. He warped away from Vormir and towards his last otherworldly destination. He grasped Mjolnir and for a moment as he found himself in between what was real and what was not, he reflected on what a relief it was that this was his last stop before he could head back to Earth, but also it meant that he was one step closer to having to make a decision. A life altering decision, literally.

Steven Rogers had all the time in the world, and yet still could not find a way to delay the inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me at machinerisms.tumblr.com


	3. Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My roommate said this one didn't injure her emotionally...so that's good I guess :p  
>  **s p o i l e r s a h e a d y a l l**

Steve felt detached from his body when he put in the time and coordinates for Asgard. His encounter with the Red Skull had done a number on him - he hadn’t been expecting it at all. He wasn’t expecting the way it had deeply affected his psyche. Why hadn’t Clint warned him that  _ he _ was there? He chastised himself for a moment. It was very likely that Clint didn’t know who the Red Skull was and that wasn’t even mentioning the fact that Clint may not have wanted to relive that moment in his life. 

He clutched the small suitcase with the stones in one hand and Mjolnir with the other in anticipation for landing on Asgard. He was curious to see where Thor had come from, even though he knew that this place no longer existed. It was destroyed in the events of Ragnarok and shortly after Thor had watched half of his people die. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Thor to return here, even momentarily, to retrieve the Reality Stone. To know that this place and these  _ people _ no longer existed and to be powerless to stop its fate.

He landed on cold marble floor, sitting down. He set his two items down and took a deep breath - he had to give the stone back to Frigga and then...and then what? He would return the Time Stone and the Space Stone and the Mind Stone, and then what? Would he go back to Bucky and Sam and a world without Tony and Nat? A world forever changed, for better or for worse? What was the point? Were they going to destroy the time machine after all the stones were returned? Would he get the chance to go back?

Steve knew that he had to make a decision at least in part before he got to New York. If he didn’t decide soon he would float around in time aimlessly and undecided. He would never be able to come to a decision if he waited long enough - he would be doomed to be paralyzed by anxiety and ‘what-ifs’. There was already a large part of him that didn’t want to get off the floor, and rather he wanted to sit there until he could sort out all of the conflicting feelings he had.

“Loki?” He looked up and saw a woman with intricately braided blonde hair holding a knife and looking confused. He couldn’t place where he had seen her before - she looked like someone he knew, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Uh, no,” He was still too dazed to think straight, but he watched her eyes skim over the hammer he was holding. “Do you know Loki? Who are you?”

“Where did you get that hammer?” She kneeled down to his level.

“Thor lent it to me. Actually, I’m supposed to give it back here.” He looked off to the side, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at.

“You’re from the future.” She said softly. “You’re here to give me something else, aren’t you?”

“I have the Reality Stone.”

“Follow me.” She stood up and Steve clambered to his feet, trailing behind her through the halls of the castle.

“Who are you?”  
“My name is Frigga,” She pushed open large golden doors. “I am Thor and Loki’s mother.”

It struck him why she had looked so familiar to him. She looked so much like Thor, she had the same hair and the same eyes, and she carried herself similarly to him as well. He stepped into a large room and Frigga closed the doors behind them.

“How did you know I was from the future?” He asked as she gestured for him to sit down on one of the chairs.

She sat down across from him. “I can sense those things, but my son was here recently. My son from the  _ future _ , and he took his hammer with him. He was also here with a talking raccoon, which was odd, but they were here for the Ether.”

“The Ether?”

“You know it as the Reality Stone.”

“You’re welcome to have it back, I don’t need it or want it.” He reached down towards the case, but Frigga shook her head.

“I can sense conflict in you, Steve Rogers.”

He flinched when she used his name. “What is it to you?”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He looked at her and his knee-jerk reaction was to say  _ no, I don’t want to talk about it. Not to you and not to anyone else, either _ , but when he looked at her face he saw all of the things her admired about Thor and he released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He wanted to be on his guard, but he couldn’t help but feel relaxed around her.

“I don’t know what I want.” He admitted. “I feel like I want so many things that can’t coexist.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“I feel like I’ve been given the chance to go back and live the life I never could have, and I want that. But I also feel this responsibility to go back to where I left from and continue my life like there. I feel like I can’t find an answer that satisfies me and everyone else.”

“You deserve to be happy,” She looked down. “I know your history. You have seen so much turmoil in your life.”

“But what should I do?”

Her eyes returned to his. “What do you want to do?”

He hesitated. He didn’t want to leave Sam and Bucky and everyone else. He had met so many extraordinary people that he had never thought was possible. He had so much respect for T’Challa, a man of dignity and honesty, Carol, and her immense power and sense of responsibility, Clint, a good man and a man of his word at that, and then there was Tony. Tony who wasn’t here anymore. Forget all the people he had met, he had still lost people. Did he have a responsibility to stay for Morgan? To help take care of her in Tony’s wake? What about Peter and all of the young people who were going to slowly rise and take his place?

He didn’t want to disregard his responsibilities, but he didn’t want to lose a chance to at the very least see her. To see Peggy and make good on the promises he had made to her. To apologize, to tell her that he loved her, and to make sure that she was okay. That she knew Hydra was infiltrating SHIELD. That she knew that he was so goddamn proud of the work that she had done. It was a strong pull in his chest to see her again and tie up all the loose ends he had created when he had plunged into the ice. In a sense, he also had a responsibility to make that aspect of his life right again.

“I want the chance to make things right.” He finally said. “At the very least I want to see my loose ends tied up.”

Frigga nodded. “I’m not sure if this is what you want to hear this, but -” She shook her head. “You have fulfilled your responsibilities, Steve Rogers. I think it’s high time that you take care of yourself.”

“Thank you.” He nodded. “I see you in Thor, you know.”

“Hm?”

“I see your kindness in him.”

She smiled. “I’ve always hoped for that. You said you have something for me?”

Steve lifted the briefcase onto his lap and opened it.  There were two stones left and a vial filled with amorphous blood red fluid. It looked evil just at a glance and he shuddered, trying to make sense of how Jane had even gotten close to it.

“Is this it?” He asked, picking up the vial.

“I can take that from you.”

He handed it over quickly, as the glass was beginning to burn his hand. he watched Frigga drop it into a mysterious cylinder and putting it in a pocket. Was that the Reality Stone? How did it get like that?

“Are you forgetting something?” She smiled.

“Oh,” He picked up Mjolnir. “Can I just hand it to you? Where do you want it?”

“You can put it on the table,” She gestured. “It will be summoned when it is needed.”

“Thank you for everything.” Steve watched her as she stood up. “How did you know who I was? Or that I was from the future?”

She turned around. “I see many things, Captain Rogers. I think it’s better if the reasons remain a mystery to you.”

“Will you be okay?”

“My story has been written.” She paused. “I will see things happen as they should. I would recommend you leave shortly before things get...messy here.”

“Okay.” He shifted awkwardly in his seat. “Thank you again.”

“You’re very welcome.”

The door shut behind her and Steve closed the briefcase before putting in the time and coordinates for the Sanctum Sanctorum. He wasn’t exactly sure what to expect once he got there, both Stephen Strange and Bruce had attempted to warn him, but their words had fallen on mostly deaf ears. He just hoped that the return of the Time Stone would go smoothly because talking to Nick Fury about the Mind Stone was sure to have its share of...issues.

He pressed a button and left Asgard for another time and place, and he felt more at peace than he had since before the snap.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at machinerisms.tumblr.com


End file.
